Ask HN: Which is your recommended backup solution for photographs?

1 points by aeurielesn ↗ HN
Personally, I have been considering a backup solution for my photographs after my recent travel. Flickr popped up even before the 1TB free upgrade with its old $25 plan. Although, the bets were against it due to reported out of the blue user stream deletions. I don't want that happening to my photographs, and I prefer my SD being destroyed than a third-party deleting my stuff.

Drive and Dropbox are the other two immediate alternatives but they are quite pricey and too much general purpose.

Someone also mentioned me 500px.

So, which one is your recommended and reliable backup solution for photographs? Are you happy with it?

5 comments

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It might be helpful if you say how much backup space you need. e.g. Dropbox is fine for me because I just don't take that many photos so their free plan is enough for me.
In that case I would say that I initially need at least 32GB. That's about 3600 photographs from my last 2 trips or so. I need to go over all those but I can't let them rest around while I do so.
Let's say your computer gets a virus, and it deletes everything on your hard disk. This will also delete all your Dropbox files.

Luckily Dropbox keeps versions. Now imagine the virus purges deleted files. Now you have to contact Dropbox support.

The type of backup you want depends what you are trying to protect against. Maybe you'll decide you want want a physically separated medium that is rarely connected to your PC.

For creating an online profile or gallery use hosted services at Flickr, Smugmug, Zenfolio, 500px etc.

For creating a self hosted gallery use Zenphoto or Jalbum.

For backups, first point, be deliberate and separate it from an photo sharing/gallery service.

Hosted backup services Backblaze and Carbonite are good options, Crashplan is also interesting.

Personally I keep 2 copies of my photos locally, that is my file server and another disk, plus I rsync every night to an offsite location across town.

I'd prefer sticking to one service specially since I'd end up paying. Flickr/500px seems to be what I will like better but I explained above why I am afraid of going with Flickr. I know anything about 500px though.

Yeah, my preference would be an online gallery hosted service with a reliable backup if such a thing exists!